Category Archives: what was I thinking

Since last time, satan has reared his ugly head and life has given me a bonified black eye, busted lip, bruised rib, and all around beating.

My mom, who I depend on way more than a nearly 50-year old (ok, 47 in two weeks, but still) woman should, has been ill.

In the hospital, taken by an ambulance, ill.

My dad, who leans heavily on my mom, has been beside himself.

My dearest friend has been given (by mere mortals) six months to live.

It has been a trying month.

First off, my mom is home, well and feeling quite herself.

My dad, an Air Force Veteran (whom we should all be applauding today for his service to the USAF) is better because my mom is feeling better.

It brings a surprising revelation to light.

While this would distress and hurt me beyond comprehension, I have this hope they would die, in their sleep, at the same time.

As awful as this may sound to some, I’d rather mourn them both at the same time than try to handle one without the other.

I can’t frankly speak for my sister, but wonder if she wouldn’t agree.

If that isn’t possible, I hope my dad, my hero and advocate goes first, because I cannot fathom him without my mom.

Mom would miss dad terribly, but she’s strong, and would survive.

Maybe I’m more crazy than I imagined, but I can handle Mom’s tears more easily than Dad’s.

I honestly don’t know how I would deal with him if he had to live without her.

As for my dearest friend, who is battling cancer, I advised her, as I do everyone, to live every day as if it’s the very last one.

Nobody, but nobody has the promise to live further than the moment they are in.

I know where I’m going when I’m gone from this world, so dying doesn’t scare me.

Living, however, without the people who love and understand me, gives me pause.

If that sounds selfish, it’s because it is.

I thought I’d grow old and watch, with my husband I dearly loved, grandchildren playing in the yard.

Then, I came home one day, and out of the clear, blue sky, found him as dead as Moses.

No warning. No goodbye. Just gone.

There’s no promise of life, to any of us, past the single moment we find ourselves living in.

If one doesn’t intend to live life as it happens, they forfeit their right to complain when it’s over, or nearly over.

You can quote me on that.

Right now, in this moment, is all I am certain of.

It is all any of us can be certain of.

This moment.

This breath.

This heartbeat.

Each day, if it doesn’t mean something, is wasted.

I say this to family, friends, former friends that I miss with an intensity that embarassess me, and though I can’t think of any specifically, my enemies.

I don’t think I have any absolute enemies. If I do, they’ve been mighty quiet about it, and I forgive them anyway, knocking out the one leg they, were they real, had to stand on.

That’s good, though, in my way of thinking. Who, when they have life to contend with, need enemies to muddy up the mess further.

And yet, as I often do, digress.

Now is the only thing that matters.

Grab on or be left behind.

Those are, in actuality, the only two choices.

As Shakespeare said (though he may have meant it differently as words in his day were perplexing, they pretty much say the same thing). To be or not to be … that is the question.

I choose to be, even when it hurts, is painful, annoying, hurtful, betraying or joyous.

I choose to give it everything I have, be whatever I can be and love, even those who don’t love me, unconditionally.

Be it joyous, angry, confused, happy, sad, contemplative or any number of emotionally relevant states, with bright lights, awesome auroras, sleepless nights and flying debris; I’m there, every day, all the way.

I know who I am and if I die before morning, I know where I’ll find myself.

That is the nature of bi-polar disorder, or in the more politically correct lingo, manic-depressive disorder.

The verbiage doesn’t change the nature of it, it simply makes those who have no clue about what it is, entails or emulates, feel better about saying it out loud.

Sometimes there is darkness, but when the darkness lifts, there is light.

And light in the aftermath of darkness is profound.

I would love to be able to explain this phenomenon, but I can’t.

I couldn’t even begin to explain it.

You either understand it because you live it or because you know someone who suffers from it or you are completely clueless.

If you are clueless, then there is nothing I can offer that will make the light bulb flick on above your head. You will never know the depths or the incredible highs of a brain that is well beyond your understanding.

I’m sorry for you, but can’t help your indifference.

Cluelessness (not a real word, I don’t think) isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but without some understanding of what goes on in the mind of a bipolarist (also not a real word), there is no way anyone can possibly understand how incredibly wonderful the moments of clarity, without racing thoughts, without disorientation, without doubt and insecurities can be.

Without the chaos, the clarity doesn’t mean anything and if one never has clarity, then their accomplishments will be mediocre at best.

It is like walking into a green, summer field and seeing a triple rainbow arch over the green field that is covered by white daisies with yellow centers.

That is what the light is like.

A moment of pure bliss that allows dreamless sleep and pure and beautiful clarity.

It allows me to understand what I have been misinterpreting, to find the truth within the lies.

It really is impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t lost, at some point, control of their conscious thought and then when hollowed out, to crash and burn.

Crashing is not the best feeling in the world, but it is necessary. It is like the control-alt-delete of the psyche and sometimes, it is at this point that people who pledge their friendship and loyalty jump ship.

How … well, convenient.

When I am depressed, well, I keep that to myself. No reason to add fuel to the fire of the witch-hunters.

I am who I am and will be who I’ll be.

I don’t need validation from people who pretend to support me when they have no interest in who I am at the core, in the depths of my heart, in the center of my soul.

I am me. I am not ashamed to be such although there are times when I am made to believe that I should be.

We bipolarists are not an anomaly. We are a force to be reckoned with because not only do we have brains that see, feel and hear everything, we are able to function during these times of chaos.

That makes us talented and creative and imaginative; and above all, it makes us survivors.

Those who take us for granted or think they can use us for their exclusive pleasure are the losers.

They didn’t get it.

They will never get it.

They lost the race when they rolled their eyes at our idiosyncrasies.

Our idiosyncrasies and oddities are what set us apart from everyone else and it is something to be cherished and embraced.

We are different, yes, and in being so, we are not cast in the same mold as the rest of humanity.

In my book, that makes us someone special and special is a pretty awesome thing to be.

I embrace it, even when I want to be rid of it, because it calls me to understand more than I should have to, endure greater disappointments than I should have to and to know more than I would have were my brain like everyone else’s.

It is at this point that I ask, who is normal? Who can maneuver through a mindfield (not a mine field, a mind one) and end up standing, head held high, solutions in hand?

Kind of puts it in perspective.

I have been mocked by ones that I truly thought I could trust.

I have been shunned by ones who have know me for years.

I have been abandoned by ones that I would have bet my life I could rely on.

These things, these events, these setbacks have not broken me yet made me more determined to be who I am.

I am content with myself even when I am discontent with myself.

I am special and the people who are like me will understand completely and hopefully feel special, too.

I am misunderstood and I am ok with that.

It means that I am a mystery and, let’s be honest here … how cool is that?

We are a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a riddle.

That makes us cool in the “you wish you could see what my brain sees” kind of way.

Yes. I am bipolar and I take each moment, each second, each event as it comes.

It is amazing what you can see when you take one moment at a time.

I love my life and though there are times when I forget who I am and can’t string words together to make coherent sentence, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Not a single thing.

I. Am. Me … and I’m good with that.

only one of hundreds of my favorite things about West Side Market in Cleveland, OH and a favorite of this bipolarist’s comfort foods 🙂

makes you hide under the covers and sleep with the lights on for a month, it sticks with you for a long, long time. We’re working on what, now? Thirty years? Thirty five? More?

It sticks. Trust me.

Ok, so maybe I am the only person, other than Laura Ingalls, who was terrified, freaked out and mentally assaulted at the thought of good-natured, sweet, gentile, patient, unassuming Mr. Olsen taking Mrs. Olsen’s head off with a sword and then answering the knock at the front door with an apron covered in blood.

Maybe I am.

It wouldn’t be the first thing, nor I regrettably admit, will it be the last, that freaked me out while having little or no effect on those around me.

No effect other than making them roll their eyes and mutter comments under their breath that they didn’t think I could hear.

I heard them.

All of them.

Well, most of them anyway.

Or I imagined them which, in my world, amounts to pretty much the same thing.

(For those who are unsure as to whom I speak, Laura was not a real person … well, she was, as she was an actress, but her character was just that … a character … made up by the ever talented, though now dead, Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have read ALL of the Little House books, unashamedly, multiple times over and do not remember this particular scene in any of them. I could have blocked it out, though, because that is what I do with disturbing images that terrify me and make me wet the bed because I am too afraid to put my feet on the floor, opening them to whatever may be underneath it, to walk to the bathroom.)

It wasn’t a scary show, but then neither was The Waltons and the episode when Elizabeth (whom I disliked a great deal anyway) was becoming a teenager, made me feel the need for serious, long-term, ongoing therapy.

Knowing these things and, knowing as I do what a fraidy-cat, chicken-hearted, scare-baby (thanks Pollyanna, for scare-baby) I am, it is with horrified trepidation that I await the soon-to-be-received Netflix selection of True Blood that is even now on its way to my terrified-by-association mailbox.

The very thought of blood in my mouth makes my usually absent gag reflex perk up and sing the hallelujah chorus.

And still yet.

I can’t imagine what I was thinking.

Yes I can. Peer pressure. I succumbed to it. Pure and simple.

I was recently introduced, by a friend, at least she was disguised as a friend, to Joe Manganiello, aka Alcide. Well, not personally introduced for if I had met him in person, I would be bragging daily in that “I’m better than you can ever hope to be because I have met Alcide in person” tone.

I don’t know exactly how to brag efficiently because I don’t have much to brag about, but were I to meet that man in person, I would learn quickly.

Or at least fake it persuasively.

And I would become adept at lying, which is pretty much the same as faking it persuasively, but oh dear me … the stories I would tell.

But all of that hinges on the the possibility that I had been introduced to him in person, when in reality, I wasn’t.

I had not heard of him before. I don’t watch TV, watch the news, read the newspaper or otherwise partake in life as it happens outside my own definition of reality.

Sometimes I wonder why I don’t just strap a backpack filled with toast-chee crackers and hot mama sausages to my back and live my life in the mountains in a way that would closely resemble Grizzly Adams … or, more aptly, Mad Jack and Old Number Seven.

So anyway, after a brief diversion, I get back to the point; this video, filled with vampires, blood, gore, blood, violence, blood, sex, blood and a gruesomeness that I cannot even imagine … oh, and blood, in the mouth no less … is on its way to my home.

I was told that this Alcide character didn’t show up until the third season, but to have a single solitary clue what was happening, I had to watch it from the beginning. I have doubts, however, given my reaction after five minutes subjected to “The Living Dead”, which is not an HBO production, that I will make it through the first episode.

That statement is notwithstanding to the fact that the email from Netflix with the photo associated with the show nearly made we wretch.

I have striven to be tough, more immune to outside influences, harder of heart and body and more like a living, breathing human being.

I really have.

But I’m not sure I accomplished what I set out to accomplish.

I wanted to be popular.

Like my sister.

I wanted to be good at sports.

Like my sister.

I wanted to have the ability to watch horror movies in the eighties with MY boyfriend instead of running out of the theater crying inconsolably.

Like my sister.

Just ask her. It was a proud moment in her life. Actually proud moments because she went on nearly every date I ever had.

But that is neither here nor there. Actually it is or I wouldn’t have brought it up, but it shouldn’t be. I’ll just say it that way.

And she, the sister I wanted to be like, watched “The Exorcist” with her friends while I cowered in my room with a thin wall between me and the TV and belted out show-tunes to keep the sound of the movie from my ears. It was pathetic and likely still the topic of dinner table conversations of those who partook in that particular episode of my life.

And people wonder why I am warped.

I suppose, too, that they will be wondering why I am in the hospital on an overdose on stolen Xanax after only a few minutes of watching the pilot episode of True Blood.

Then they will remember this post and say “Oh … yeah … well, I’m not all that surprised” as they bite into their warm, six inch, flatbread, tuna with provolone, spinach, avocado, red onion, black olive sandwich with jalapeno on the side from Subway.

Then they will go on with their lives while I gulp down Thorazine and fight off night terrors.

Peer pressure.

Do as I say, not as I do and avoid it at all costs.

I’ve got one hand in my pocket and the other one on an ancient typewriter